sycamore???

Erm.. Beyond the question of legality/morality etc of experiments of whatsoever nature on unsuspecting population, surely your dad would have been aware of the dangers posed by heavy metals, esp Cd? I mean, to him personally if not the rest of the UK?? Even back in the 50s these were known so far as I'm aware??

I totally take your point RE any poisons/radiation being potentially damaging to the posterior irrespective of which of the parents gets it. They just tend to shout louder about women because men can only pass on damage genetically, whereas all non-genetic teratogenic effects happen in the womb. Also, all of the ovaries a woman will ever have form at the time she's a foetus, so if a woman is exposed to any teratogenic stuff while she is pregnant with a baby girl, that baby girl's ovaries could be affected, meaning that not only the baby herself is at risk but also that baby's future children. I.e. any damage to women's health could potentially go further than that to a man's health.

None of which justifies any damage, long- or short-term, to public health for the sake of warfare, profit, or due to negligence.

My mum grew up in a small town in the Soviet Union which had a military nuclear facility. Back in those days the dangers of radiation weren't well known, and those that were tended to be deliberately "overlooked". The town wasn't even on the map, on a par with other such military locations. When my mum's family wanted to go on holiday they weren't allowed to say the name of the town, they always had to say they're from a nearby city. If anyone wanted to come and visit them, an entry permit had to be issued. My mum now has an agressive auto-immune condition which affects her thyroid gland. Luckily I'm fine but my brother's gone bald and fat at 30 with plenty of exercise and a normal-ish diet, wonder if that has anything to do with that nuclear plant.

 

from what I remember of my (highly advanced) school chemistry course (I mean we got a weekly run of the chem lab at Moscow State Uni! :happydance, H2O2 won't be a practical thing to use, it's just a strong oxidizer - it'll prob do some damage on impact but for it to kill the roots you'd need industrial amounts of it, and in likewise industrial strength. I mean we're talking concentrations over 30% here at which it becomes flammable by which stage the MI5 will be after younot to mention the expense.

I have a bottle of 3% solution of it in my medicines cupboard, it's a fab wound desinfetant, much better than alcohol as won't dry the tissues. I'm sayin this just to give folks on here the indication of how strong it actually needs to be to make an impact.

Bleach may do your trees more damage, tho not as clean to use - after all, H2O2 simply degrades to water and oxygen, whereas bleach... releases chlorine...

 

Yes I agree, with what you say, I am not blind to my fathers work, a fact radio 4 was shocked to hear, he worked/was paid by MRE Microboiligical Reasearch Establishment, but the paper chase led into CDE Chemical Defence Establishment, they were spraying the whole of the uk with heavy metals from a modified icing tanker aircraft, they used live and dead tracer cells to track the cloud, thats where my father came in, you will find his name in the Acknowledgements for being respocible for the assesment of the cloud....but anyway thats another topic, my point was only a warning that both sexs can be at risk, more likely in females granted:WINK1:

yes you are correct in part, H2O2 is fantastic stuffand safe if handled correctly and stored in 316L stainless pressure vessals (in the freezer just to be sure:WINK1 it is not flammable tho, it only produces O2 and H2O, its the heat produced by it raipdly decompossing that makes things burst into flame, ie pour it on a hydro carbon and it'll burst into flame, its the hydro carbon thats burning not the H2O2, the H2O2 just makes it burn much faster by supplying vast amounts of oxygen, tho things can go very wrong very fast, it was the H2O2 used as torpedo propellant that sunk one of the Russian nuclear subs sadly, but also used in drag cars n things both as a propellant or an oxident, its easy to make and becomes more stable at the higher end of the % by wieght, but a very long way from being idiot proof, so maybe not such a good idea lol but fun none the less we'll have to think about what else peeps can use.:WINK1: I've started on grandad Potty's copper idea, should get it done today on one of the trunks, its the "slow kill" so best crack on lol.

Plant Potty.

 

No, I wasn't trying to demonise your father - at the end of the day, it's a tough question as to what extent you could blame the individual pilots who flew over Hiroshima and Nagasaki for example. Being part of a military machine you don't always get a choice. What I was saying is,
DID HE NOT REALISE WHAT HARM HE WAS DOING TO HIMSELF?? Would THAT not be reason enough to pull out?
Although I suppose his logic may have been, how do you feed your family in the hungry post-war times.

 

Sorry I meant explosive not flammable, posted that at 5 am you see
even vast amounts of liquid nitrogen can be explosive if you release it too quickly, not because it reacts with anything as it's pretty inert but through sheer quick evaporation.

How about that, tho? :WINK1: Freeze your trees with liquid nitrogen! :yess:

Where DO you get 316L bottles of H2O2 from, anyway?*looking around cautiously*
Not sure about it getting more stable at higher concentrations either, otherwise you'd be able to synthesize it in pure form which isn't the case. Has to be a water solution!

 

all this talk of H2O2 made me think of beautiful purple foam clouds you could get by mixing it with KMnO4 (potassium permanganate) :D
Which brings me back to the original theme of this thread (which you, Potty, and I have effectively hijacked ) - do you think it would be possible to kill a tree with a strong solution of KMnO4? That's quite safe if you use it carefully, quite cheap to buy and doesn't degrade as quickly as H2O2 which might mean it'll have the time to get to the roots. Fancy a try, Potty? :WINK1:

 

Sorry, I never intended a high jack just not to keen on wildly spraying weed killers for some reason

So back to killing trees lmao, this morning I cut 2 onces of 1mm copper wire, it was 5 meters in total, I cut it to increase the surface area of it....



Then I made a 12mm paper tube (junk mail, I was looking for some card when more came thro the door, first time its ever been usefull:yess to check the length of the fill and put some tape on my wood drill so I could see the correct debth, then made a couple of 14mm plugs from old hedge, oh and made a junk mail paper funnel too....



Then drilled the first trunk in two places




Then packed the two holes with the copper using the funnel and a twig to push it all home, filled with water to give the process a head start, and hammered the plugs in..........


So now its sit back and see what happens, I'm not convinced that the copper in granuals is the way to go, its got way more surface area than plain copper rod, but its not forced into contact as well as a copper nail would be, I might soft solder more 1mm wire together and make some home made nails.

I dont know much about potassium permanganate other than Grandad Potty had a jar or purple crystals locked in his pioson store, I was never allowed to touch it lol, not sure where I would get some, Wilton Garden center might do it, its about 2 miles up the road on the bus, I might take the kids out there at the weekend so I can have a look around anyway, then take the kids to the play park in Wilton House.

Tho to be honest I'd rather use something a little less toxic

Plant Potty.

 

Roundup is a Glyphosate based product, and as any gardener knows, Glyphosate can only be absorbed through foliage. Cutting said foliage off and pouring the weedkiller on the soil is doing nothing but throwing money away.

 

With all due respect John I point you to the bottom photo of post #15, How would I pick out four 25 feet tall trees growing across 5 feet of in the very middle of the hedge without picking out at least 8 feet of hedge with them? I'm not work shy with a pick, I picked out my sons trampoline 12 feet across n 3 deep through flint, clay and those lovely butterfly bushes, I just cant see how what you are saying is possible without a huge hole in the hedge?

How deep do you need to go to kill a 7~8 inch Sycamore stump? its maybe doable if its only 12~18 inches deep and the width of each stump, but its not gonna be easy coz there's no room to swing the pick

Regards, Plant Potty.

 

i thought roundup and the like only worked if u applied it to the leaves???

 

well thats confirmed for me
cheers

 

Quite possibly,
I was only referring to an article I found on the internet on how to get rid of Virginia creeper which as everyone knows is a tough thing to get rid of. It said cut ahort stumps just above soil level and apply undiluted Roundup on the stumps.

I've personally never used Roundup as I prefer gentler methods, generally

 

Well. I suppose it's easier to kill them so you can then take your time to pick them out one by one, rather than having to pick them all out in one day or pay Stump Busters for fear they'll have regrown with vengeance by the time you get round to the next one, no?